By Krithika Dinesh and Sandeep Patel
Authors are Research Associate, Centre for Policy Research (CPR)-Namati Environment Justice Programme and Former Member, Janabhivyakti, Chhattisgarh respectively. krithikadinesh@namati.org.

Public hearing is an important step in the environmental clearance of any developmental project. For Sarguja Thermal Power Plant, attached to a coal mining block, the hearing was postponed despite community leaders pointing to non-compliance of several conditions of the environment impact assessment.

On December 30, 2015 a public hearing was supposed to be conducted in Sarguja, Chhattisgarh as a part of the ‘environmental clearance’ process of a thermal power plant (TPP). However, a few days prior to the scheduled date, the district collector of the region ‘postponed the public hearing until further notification’ (Das, 2015 December 26). Earlier on December 21, 2015 a group of community representatives of the region submitted a letter to the district collector highlighting the obvious discrepancies in...